Why Are Americans So Primitive?

Paul Handover, from Learning From Dogs, a commentator of this site asks: “Your essay, Patrice, clearly depicts your views towards Western religions but here’s a question: why do so many Americans embrace Christianity in what one might describe as almost a fundamentalist manner? For such a forward-looking nation in so many ways, this aspect has puzzled me for some time.”

Both aspects are related, the religious primitivism, and the charge forward. Metaphysics, like other things meta, is primarily to address down to Earth questions. Literally:

God Given! Let the USA Bless God. Alleluia.

[Don’t You Ask How We Got All This.]

The USA is like a horse with blinds: it is forced by its masters to pull a heavy load, and devices around its head do not allow it to look sideways. Not looking around and questioning is fundamental. Sitting in a café’, and chewing the world for hours, is best done somewhere in Europe. Americans do not like to discuss the big issues as much: they are too close to “conspiracy theories”.

An all-encompassing philosophical attitude looks around too much, away from the task at hand. It would ask too many questions about the reigning plutocracy. The plutocrats do their best this not to happen. The USA functions like an empire driven by masters, and common people think accordingly.

The coming back of the Christian God in the USA, since the 1940s, corresponded to an enormous influx of cheap labor from (then) primitive areas of the world (say Mexico). The Latinos provided with cheap labor, but they have a strong family structure. Primitive Christianism is a proven recipe to keep them down (just ask the Conquistadores).

In 1954, “IN GOD WE TRUST” was made the motto of the USA, and enforced in public schools in many states (not Hawai’i). So now we have a president who asks God to bless the USA, as if he were the Pope, urbi et orbi.

I have written numerous essays on the connection between the Bible, where God Himself conducts holocausts, and the barbarity of the first three centuries of occupation of North American by English speaking Europeans. Whereas in Spain, Charles Quint, as early as 1550 CE, ordered to stop holocausts in the Americas, such an order to stop the massacre, was never given in the territory that was going to become the USA.

The result can be contemplated in the Brazil football world cup: whereas the Central American football teams (Costa Rica, Mexico, Honduras) are genetically mixed with Indian genetic stock, there is not one speck of Indian facial trait in Team USA.

A successful holocaust is not conducive to introspection. Especially when one enjoys its fruits every day.

But let’s look at it from a different angle. Obama named a commission to look into the disappearance of the bees. Well, there is no need to do this: the factors are well known, including nicotinoid insecticides.

So the leadership of the USA is playing stupid, to gain time for those who make and use such nicotinoids: playing dumb has its uses to gain time. After slavery was officially outlawed at the end of the Secession War, in December 1865, racism kept on going strong in the USA. Obsessing about the Christian God, allowed not to notice that: how could people obsessed by becoming good, be bad?

After all, the Bible is racist enough to endorse any tribal excess: it’s all about the Chosen People (whom Hitler chose for a perversely inverted special treatment). The myths of the Bible, such as the “city on a hill”, and, of course, the chosen people, in this case, the Pale Faces, was to rule what was obviously the Promised Land.

Naivety can be brutally effective. And it’s not always wrong.

Minds in the USA are concentrated on achieving practical tasks. Instead of remaking the world in their head, the world is God-given.

So citizens of the USA work, and work, and never, ever, contest the established order seriously.

That’s why you will never see Paul Krugman contest deeply the banking system. Quite the opposite: he wants central banks to send it ever more money.

Paul is practical: he camps on popular positions. That makes him the mostpopular blogger for progressives on BOTH sides of the Atlantic (so Americanization is progressing, even among self-proclaimed progressives!)

Popular now, sure, but a future dwarf, not to say flea, in the history of thought.

All and any Americans are deeply uncomfortable when one makes deep critiques against “their” system. I had a rich, highly successful architect with plenty of skyscraper under construction, become red in the face, when he accused me of wanting to change the Constitution of the USA, and that never, ever, any reasonable American would take me seriously. Never mind that dozens of European countries change their Constitutions continually. In the USA, it’s the proverbial “third rail”, where all the electricity goes through. He never invited me again, an experience I had too many times to bother counting them.

Challenging the system, in a country such as France, for at least three centuries (after Louis XIV croaked), has been seen as the most interesting exercise (except for when the humor-less Robespierre and Napoleon ruled). In the USA, it’s viewed as a personal threat (by all too many).

Americans come from all over the world. Only very strict simplifying principles keep their minds compatible with each other. At least, so all too many of them feel.

Yesterday I was swimming in a lake in California. It has a small official “Swim Area”, watched over by no less than four official would-be rescuers armed with loud speakers. Going outside is “Against The Law”, although deprived of danger. Other arcane laws apply: a five year old child, going out of such and such a particular limit, within the “Swim Area”, exposes the accompanying parent(s) to a $300 fine.

Being “Against the Law” is even more important than God, in the USA. Some laws seem set-up, just to test whether one will respect the “Against The Law” Principle. Those who do not respect that Principle are “outlaws”, and definitively not felt to be socially acceptable.

As this happened in Berkeley, a supposedly rebellious, flower power town, if there ever was one in the USA, some swimmers braved the interdiction, and were soon yelled at through the loudspeakers by adolescents a third their age, threatening them with the long arm of the law.

(Unsurprisingly, old foggies from the 1960s tend to be more rebellious than the youth whose parents were raised by Reagan; so, all too often, the enforcers are young, the old disobedient.)

As in all good American movies, the cavalry was called to the rescue against the terrorists. Black uniformed police officers swarmed the edges of the lake. A police helicopter flew low overhead, barking out orders. Never mind the budget crisis. Never mind this is a narrow 300 meters deep valley adorned with giant eucalyptuses and towering redwoods.

What is important, is to demonstrate how important law and order is in the USA. “Shock and Awe” will be applied. If the helicopter crashes, the rogue swimmers will be no doubt charged with conspiracy to commit murder.

Order starts with God. The God that gave the “Promised Land” to the “Chosen People” is best. He has proven his worth by killing millions, emptying continents, and torturing David’s son to death, because his father had not respected the law of God. The law of God is now applied to European banks and Argentina, bankrupting them all, empowering and enriching Americans some more, proving how this metaphysics of brutal primitivism is all worthwhile.

Let Obama conclude: “God bless the United States of America!” OK, children! Now that we are done with philosophy, back to work!

There’s that well-known saying about the corrupting effect of power. My instinct is that it is an accurate indicator of reality. That few, very few, people, organisations, and countries maintain integrous behaviours when bestowed with power.

So the core question is whether the USA is any different to any other country given that other country having the same power as my new home country. I think not.

Your answer to my question about Americans and God was very interesting. My instinct is that you are broadly correct.

But so what! It comes down to that power thing again.

Take, for example, the lying and deceit that has come to light in the UK over the phone hacking scandal. Absolutely terrible. But so what!

While mankind has this endemic flaw over power and corruption the outcomes you describe in your essay will continue for ever.

In stark contrast, however, are the behaviours of the people close to us here in little old Merlin, Oregon. Over my life I have travelled extensively and lived in five countries: England, Australia, Greece (Cyprus), Mexico and America.

The most open, warm and friendly neighbours have been (are) the good people who live close by here in Merlin. They duplicate the same loving behaviours Jean and I experienced when we were living in Payson, AZ.

Frankly, that’s all that matters. In fact, it is the only game in town. Because as this country at large, as with the world in general, goes to hell in a hand basket, there is only one sustainable option left.

It’s back to that power thing again. The strong, good power of communities.

It will be communities across the world, linking and sharing ideas, delivering hope of a better future, that win out. Large, powerful countries have had their day.

Yes, the future is in the community. Yet something else to learn from dogs! 🙂

Thanks for the long answer, Paul! The power thing, the strength of community. I broadly agree with what you say, if the mood is to have a nice evening with the new neighbors, making friends.

However the “power thing” is not what it used to be. It’s now enormously leveraging. When 2,000, yes, just two thousands, mostly highly educated “Zonderkommandos” (Special Commandos) swept behind the Wehrmacht in summer 1941, they literally assassinated hundreds of thousands, if not millions. So much for the power of communities!

We can do the community thing: Putin found a new way to do it, slipping in very small, heavily armed, highly trained commandos, indeed.

Meanwhile Obama violated all the laws of war with his drone method of assassinating whoever he pleased, wherever. A commission just found the same conclusions I had drawn years ago: that was the gate to hell, to the forever war… And inviting Putin to do the same (and that he is, except he uses humans, not machines, so far).

Now, in Oregon, you have the exact last spot of temperate Earth away from all troubles. Well chosen.

But you know, as well as I do that dog philosophy will not save us: the Greek (Diogenes), the “CYNICS” tried exactly that. But it was too late. Fascism and military occupation by plutocrats and religious fanatics lasted 23 centuries, until the budding empire of the European Union saved Greece (from Washington’ a notion that makes friend Chris Snuggs howl).

Funny you said that “Large, powerful countries have had their day.” Benign said just the same. Nothing could be FURTHER from the truth. This is the illusion all too many Europeans are living under, while the BRICS and the USA, and Australia, not to speak of thermonuclear Pakistan, etc. are gaining in power by leaps and bounds.

Chris Snuggs uses that very anti-factual notion to say that there should be no European empire, and Yorkshire can be self dependent now as it was 15 centuries ago (before being run over by the Angles, Saxons, Viking, Franks and what not)… Meanwhile the USA plutocracy is forcing Argentina into bankruptcy. Meaning Europe itself (because what the American “justice” plutocrats are saying is that Greece, Portugal, Spain, etc. OUGHT to have gone bankrupt too).

You yourself enjoy Oregon, and it’s not run over by climate refugees, precisely because the USA is so strong. Even more true in the EU, protected by the watery moat of the Mediterranean, while dozens, if not hundreds, drown every day.
PA

Time will reveal which of our philosophies is correct! 😉 But what better thing to do than discuss this face to face over a beer or a glass of wine. Didn’t realise that you were a CA resident: not a million miles from Southern Oregon. You and yours come and see us! 🙂

It’s not a question of having one philosophy correct and the other not. They are both correct. That’s one thing “Red” may not understand. If I am doing solo climbing above a mile high drop until the clouds, that restricts the operational philosophy. The philosophy of the cocktail mood is different from that of ultimate philosophy. That’s precisely why I don’t do cocktails very much. No time, obviously. Actually I strongly restrict as much as I can my travelling.

But I appreciate the invitation, and hope springs eternal, a philosophy of its own: I passed through Oregon (and even climbed there), at least four times (long ago).
PA

Patrice, on rereading your reply I see you have not understood me with regard to community. When you speak of those atrocities, that is nothing to do with community. Just because a small, as in number, group of persons do something such as you describe, that does not make them a community.

community (n.) Look up community at Dictionary.comlate 14c., from Old French comunité “community, commonness, everybody” (Modern French communauté), from Latin communitatem (nominative communitas) “community, society, fellowship, friendly intercourse; courtesy, condescension, affability,” from communis “common, public, general, shared by all or many,” (see common (adj.)). Latin communitatem “was merely a noun of quality … meaning ‘fellowship, community of relations or feelings,’ but in med.L. it was, like universitas, used concretely in the sense of ‘a body of fellows or fellow-townsmen’

When the Catholics are having “communion”, it’s to celebrate their community.

BTW, Nazism, and many like it, showed something else: local communities are nothing for Big Brother, but ants to crush. Remember McCarthyism in the USA.

Philosophist?? Philo-Sophist? Well, Socrates would have been proud and happy with that one. He hated sophists and scientists, and, as I am both, he laughs…

OK, so wait. As the Roman state imploded after 400 CE, all the “barbarian” successor kingdoms agreed, explained and exposed, in writing, that the state was all about the law (the Franks, the Burgonds, the Ostrogoths, the Wisigoths, and a few Vandals argued this very loudly: they had learned their lesson well!)

Nowadays there is no doubt the empires are providing the law. Xi had high level ex generals Xu (ex-Politburo member!!) and Gu arrested, big time, for corruption… Putin has never seen a Pussy Riot he did not want to jail, and had the law for it. Even Sudan has laws for executing Xtians…

So how are “empires collapsing everywhere”??

Plus, you say it yourself, The danger of fascism and war is greater than ever in my 63 years…. And I agree.

Now trying to assimilate me by innuendo to Foucault or Derrida, not to say Badiou, or Althusser, is a low blow to which only an empire of thought can resist.

BTW, more recent French philosophers (nouveaux philosophes) have got more understandable, just as a shallow flaque d’eau is more understandable than a murky, malaria infected pond.

I am astonished that so many people do not understand (or do not accept) the famous quote: “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” The founding fathers DID understand, which is why they tried to build in the “checks and balances” into the Constitution. The fact that the average American consciously or unconsciously also understands this is the reason for their distaste at messing about with it. For example, gun control, which is clearly seen by those opposed as the state’s way of concentrating more power in its hands. My understanding of the dictum explains my loathing for “big” with regard to organisations. The bigger the organisation of any kind the greater its power and logically its corruption (if you accept the dictum). More to the point, the bigger an organisation the greater its capacity for damage if it IS corrupt, which it almost certainly is. This is why I loathe and despise those who – TOTALLY WITHOUT A MANDATE – seek to create a “United States of Europe”. “SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL.”

Gun control is all about the NRA, and buying elections and politicians. No Brit can talk about the violence in the USA. Not obeying the police gets you killed quickly here. Don’t forget to put both hands on the wheel, Sir!

OK, let’s do without Europe (too big), and without FIFA (too big). Actually, let’s follow England back home. No doubt England can organize itself in a small independent FIFA, and play in its corner. After UKIP, FIFAIP. If Scotland quits the madness, England Independence Party, EIP!

And London, with its 400,000 French will secede! London Independence Party LIP, is already paying LIP service to whom Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, London’s mayor, generously called the “peasants” of UKIP! He even called that a “jacquerie” in his excellent French!

70% of professional footballers in British clubs are FOREIGNERS,what you, the very honorable Chris Snuggs, called in a somewhat unworldly manner “economic refugees“. So, when the real Brits have to really play, well…

You may loath “big”, but big will wallop you. “Big” is actually walloping Europe. USA plutocrats are systematically smacking down the world financial system in the last few weeks. The small people out there have to serve the big Americans.

As far as United States of Europe, you are right: we did not have a big war there for 69 years, it’s high time to make another one by beefing up the hatred. Those USE prevent that war. A shame. A shame too that elected governments decide everything. Why can’t we just all have queens, kings and plutocrats, and a chamber of LORDS?

Actually the kings in England invaded from the Netherlands. That’s why they are so right: war, invasion, crushing the small people. That’s why we, the American masters, who are very big, love them.

You love small, we love big. We, the big, need the small to define us.
PA

PS I fear your anti-Americanism sometimes tends to diminish the force of your arguments Patrice. The Yanks have no monopoly of – or even pre-eminence in – corrruption and “primitivism”,. You may recall the Hollande “holier-than-thou” Socialist government of which the Minster put in charge of rooting out private citizens’ cash stashes hidden away in tax havens was himself revealed to have a secret Swiss bank account. The latest news is that of Sarkozy currently being interviewed (or interrogated if you prefer) by the French authorities over illegal campaign contributions, including from Gaddafi.

Incidentally, the fact that a current French President is immune to prosecution for crimes is in stark contrast to the situation in the USA, even if their law was abused in the Monica Lewinsky case.

At the risk of an element of over-generalisation, I would say that much of the Spanish political elite is as corrupt as hell, with in realspeak the current PM being no better than a common thief. Actually, far worse, since he was and is immeasurably far better off than a common thief and is also in a position of trust where he should know better.

The Greek political elite is disgusting, having leeched off North European money for a decade (after LYING to get into the euro) and contributed to its country’s appalling social and economic state (60% of youth unemployment and likely to last for a DECADE)

The banking fiasco is blamed on the USA (and of course on the Anglo-Saxons in general, always a convenient scapegoat for elitist, arrogant European political class) but would have had negligeable impact on Europe had not the latter’s own politicians encouraged a reckless borrow and spending spree which has left many European countries technically bankrupt.

No, if we want to improve the world, we have to look in our own back yard first. France, for a start, is heading in a VERY bad direction. Unemployment rose AGAIN last month and I see NO results of this moronic government’s “Responsibility Pact” being rolled out in any meaningful way. Much of the French press is full of doom-laden revolutionary hysteria. The latter may be OTT, but France has always been a social pressure-cooker and at some point the lid is going to blow off. The response of the European political elite is “more and deeper of the same”, as if the startling results of the recent EU-elections had not happened. This is partly because Brussels lives in its own bubble almost entirely detached from the real world and certainyl not suffering ANY of the consequences of its own follies.

I actually believe the EU to be one of the most corrupt organisations on the planet, and this is partly explained by the obscene remuneration its officials pay themselves. TEN THOUSAND Eurocrats arn more than the British OM. National governments allow this since Brussels is an extremely lucrative place to get a job once your national electorate kicks you out. The stench of corruption is nauseating. See the latest news re Schultz.

The REAL mystery is why the plebs accept all this, and for me the answer is in poor education about politics in general. ALL KIDS should study PPE (Politics, Philosophy and Economics) not just the Oxbridge elite. The most staggering example of the elite’s total control and manipulation of the plebs has been in Greecve, where the corrupt and failed political elite responsible for getting Greece into its worst post-war crisis and misery were STILL returned to power in an election. Really, the people’s patience (or idiocy) is sometimes staggering. No different to the USA, which clearly needs a big shake-up in political parties but yet continually swings between Republicans and Democrats, both of which parties are part of the more-or-less corrupt, pork-pie patrician elite. One hardly admires the Republican Tea Partygoers, but one can understand their disgust with Washington.

Chris: Thanks for the long answer. Many points to address, not time now. Sarkozy was ARRESTED (“garde a vue”). Very good. The corruption in Europe is staggering, true. The SOVEREIGN DEBT crisis was caused by saving private banks without nationalizing them (the country that nationalized most was the UK: Black Rock, RBS, etc.).

Yet the degree of corruption in the USA is even more staggering: it’s turned into law. Even The Economist said as much in one his leaders last week.

Does that mean The Economist is now anti-American, like Patrice? Is it an infection? An infection of Anti-Americanism.

The Tea Party is pretty much similar to the FN in France. But it has been retargeted by the plutocratic masters (whereas Marine Le Pen is her own girl).

France is handicapped, like most European countries, the UK included, by not having tough masters who know best, as in the USA. If they did, they would have king Euro, they would frack, they would make GMOs, kill the bees, the masters’ money would own media and elections and politicians, they would use asymmetric laws on the world, Europe would be the number one tax haven, while using anti-tax haven laws to break all other banks around the world, or even drive countries to bankruptcy, etc.

A friend had this to say in response to the idea that the Church was responsible for the destruction of classical culture in the west.

“The church was preserving classical culture from barbarian raiders who were destroying everything related to the Roman empire. Then, later, they applied the philosophies to Christianity to broad the scope and understanding of their faith. The church was successful though, I don’t think we would have the connection to the classical world that we do without them. Our counting system may be Arabic but a lot of social, political and philosophical ideas come from the expansion of the classics.”

Thanks Alexi, questions always welcome
My thoughts? The first one is that I have to write a book. Instead of referring back to spread out essays, a book called:
“THE CHRISTIAN DESTRUCTION OF THE WEST”
would be most helpful. Followed by:
“THE RENOVATED ROMAN EMPIRE”.

Religious establishment is a problem with US society. God and country are united in the minds of all too many. Although many may not belong to a church, the pall of religion hangs over society and has become pervasive in government. “Thoughts and prayers” is the typical request or response to some misfortune or tragedy with little done to really address a situation that might have some chance of resolution if they applied some critical thought or action.

It was not in the beginning. The first two presidents jointly signed a document, the first STATE document of the US, of a few sentences affirming that “THE USA HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION”.(from memory, although I have an essay on this)… OK, here it is exactly:

“The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.” [Washington-Adams joint declaration]
Or see my essay in the Daily Kos, before it BANNED me:http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/1/20/686471/-
[Because I attacked the union of Christian Church and Obama adminstration, I got BANNED, hahahaha. What idiots. Still, it worked! Once banned the left was told I should be, me and my ideas, hated…]

Reblogged this on A Black Writer in Berlin and commented:
I just had this thought concerning Americans a moment ago, and decided to Google something about the obvious but largely unspoken primitivism of Americans. When I say “primitive” I am not referring to Native Americans or so-called “Indians,” but that big fat gang of lard-asses that eats hamburgers, hates niggers, Mud-slimes, spics and fags, and thinks universal health care is “Communist” and “un-American.” These savages currently occupy the White House and run the entire American establishment from top to bottom. They also define what is “real” and what is “not real.” They’re also the enemies of mankind.

Hello P. Lewis, and welcome!
Your comments should now be posted immediately…
Thanks for reblogging me!
Well, I believe systems of mind have a life of their own. One can also call them “mentalities”, but they are more general than “ideologies”.
As far as the people in thew White House are concerned, I believe they have had all too much power and wiles, ever since LBJ. However, it’s not really the fault of opportunists to be opportunistic, that’s what they are. I was for a little while behind the security bubble at the (Obama) WH, and the little I saw was awesome, and extremely frightening. The power of the WH is astounding… And thoroughly incompatible with democracy. It does not matter who it is…

By setting up auch a system (and not just in the USA), humanity has become its own worst enemy…